The Genetic Lottery
by Dusty
Summary: Not everyone can be a powerhouse superhero. What happens to those who lose the genetic lottery?


Title: The Genetic Lottery  
  
Author: Dusty (aka Raksha)  
  
Rating: PG  
  
Summary: Not everyone can be a powerhouse superhero. What happens to those who lose the genetic lottery?   
  
Disclaimer: Marvel owns the universe this story takes place in. The Common People concept (www.subreality.com/tcp.htm) is not mine either. For those who don't know, Common People stories are about mutants in the Marvel universe that are not superheros or supervillains. They have no contact at all with established characters. This isn't your average Common People story.  
  
Jenny looked at the quiet, dark church in front of her. Once it must have been beautiful, but over the years it had fallen into disrepair along with the rest of the neighborhood. It desperately needed a new coat of white paint, the boards on the steps were split and crooked, and the stained glass windows had sections broken out that had been covered with sheets of thick plastic. Jenny checked the address and name of the church in front of her and compared it to the one printed on the scrap of newspaper she held in her hand. They matched, so she took a deep breath, climbed the broken stairs and entered the church. Once inside, she could see it wasn't completely dark. To the right of the entrance, a warm glow crept up the stairs leading to the basement and a few voices could be heard from below.  
  
*That must be where the meeting is. Well, here we go,* Jenny thought. Pulling her coat tighter about herself, she descended the stairs. On the wall directly opposite the staircase was posted a piece of paper which said "Mutation Acceptance Support Group meeting in room #3. Last door on the left!" The directions were unnecessary since room #3 was the only one lit at this time of night, but at least she knew she was in the right place.  
  
Jenny was not the kind of person who really goes in for the whole self-help movement, but when she'd seen the ad for this new support group in the newspaper earlier in the week she thought she should just give it a chance. She'd never seen anything like it before. There were plenty of services and groups aimed at people whose mutations made living normal lives difficult. Mostly they were aimed at controlling the damage, teaching control, or finding some way to block the power. Some helped people come to grips with the radical changes their new powers had caused in their lives. There was even a school mutant kids could go to! This group, however, wasn't just for people coming to grips with new powers. It wasn't for people with destructive powers, either. It was for people who hated their stupid, useless mutations.   
  
It was for people like Jenny. She could make things green. Not just any green, either. It was a particularly nasty shade of muddy, vomit-inducing, olive green.  
  
Steeling herself and putting on a friendly smile, Jenny stepped into the room and looked around. The small room was worn, but still cozy. The peeling paint was a buttery yellow that didn't at all go with the reddish linoleum floor. Several battered couches were pulled into the center of the room to form a circle around a low table holding coffee and cookies. Several people had arrived before Jenny and they rose to greet her.   
  
*Well, they all look normal enough,* she thought. *I suppose that only makes sense, though. If they were really freaky looking their mutations wouldn't be useless. They'd be trouble!*  
  
"I'm Andy," the shy blond guy Jenny sat next to said. His voice was soft and he kept glancing up at Jenny's face, never meeting her eyes, and then looking down again. "Do you want some cookies? They're really good."  
  
"That'd be great. Thanks, Andy," she replied. He quickly darted toward the table and grabbed some cookies and a napkin for her. There was an odd soft rustling sound when he sat down again, but before she could ask him what it was, several other people stepped into the room.   
  
"Oh, thank God! I thought we'd be late!" exclaimed a tall teenage girl with wild makeup and several facial piercings. She walked past the table in the middle of the room and grabbed a cup of coffee and then flopped onto a brown couch sending a cloud of dust up around her. Following behind her were two equally striking people. One boy was shiny, as if his skin had been laminated. The other boy had the longest hair Jenny had ever seen. It was done up in a series of elaborate braids and wound all over his head.  
  
"No, you're not late! It's only just now 8:57," said the middle aged woman Jenny believed to be the group leader. Jenny glanced around for a clock, but she couldn't see one. She shrugged, figuring the woman must have a watch on her somewhere.  
  
The group chatted and waited a few more minutes in case any others showed up.  
  
"Okay, we should start!" The middle aged woman's voice broke through the chatter and people grew quiet. "Welcome! I'm Audrey, the group leader. Since this is the first meeting, I think I should start out by telling you a bit about myself and my inspiration for starting this group. I'm a registered nurse and I've worked with many support groups over the years. I originally got involved with them because I was doing in-home care for terminally ill people and would often take them to various group meetings. I saw how much they helped people and eventually I decided to get training so I could lead them myself. This is the first group I've actually started, rather than taken over from a previous leader. I'd been thinking a lot about my mutation and how difficult it was for me to come to terms with and figured I couldn't be the only one with this problem. I know what time it is. I am consciously aware of what time it is, down to the millisecond, all the time.   
  
"I first noticed this started in my early teens. You know that saying 'a watched pot never boils?' It's referring to the impatience you feel when you're watching and waiting for something to take place. I felt like that all the time. At first I just figured it was due to boredom and teen angst. However, soon it occurred to me that I never needed a watch or an alarm clock to wake me up or anything. I just knew. I was always waiting, too. What I was waiting for was the future. My next class, the next TV show, bedtime, the next second, whatever. Since I could never distract myself from the time, I lived in constant anticipation of the next minute, the next hour. I never even knew it was due to a mutation until I got extremely sick one winter. Among the various blood tests the doctor ordered was a screening for the X-gene. I tested positive, of course. I was evaluated by some government mutant experts and it was eventually determined that my power was some sort of inherent awareness of the rotation and revolution of the earth. Basically, the passage of time. This was not dangerous or useful, or even interesting, in any way, so I was dismissed and no assistance of any kind was offered.   
  
"Living in a state of constant anticipation like that was driving me crazy. I hated my mutation. It took many years for me to come terms with who I am and change my way of thinking. I've had to retrain myself to look forward to each coming second with a sense of excitement for what it might bring instead of being impatient for it to hurry up and get here already. I want to help others train themselves to look at their mutations in a similar helpful manner. Okay, well, that's my story! I think for tonight, to start out with, we should just tell each other the basic facts of our mutations and a little bit of our history. In the coming weeks we can get into the real nitty gritty emotional stuff! Who would like to share?"  
  
"I'll start!" the tall girl with the wild makeup said. Crossing her legs and sitting up straighter, the girl flashed a bright smile around the circle. "My name is Sandra and I can move my bellybutton! See!"   
  
Sandra pulled up her sleeve and extended her arm toward the center of the circle. Sure enough, right in the center of her forearm was a bellybutton. Jenny's eyebrows shot up. That was...gross. Jenny really hoped she could control it. It was bad enough having a weird and useless power when it was private like Audrey's, but if Sandra couldn't control it and her bellybutton suddenly moved onto the middle of her forehead during class or something, well that would be horrible!  
  
"A few years ago when I was fourteen I finally managed to talk my mom into letting me get my bellybutton pierced. Baby's first piercing! Awwww! Anyway, I was excited but soooo nervous. I went into the piercing place. I was laying back in the chair, the guy had the little clamps, the needle, everything was ready. Just when he was about to shove the needle through I had this huge, terrified adrenaline surge and my bellybutton suddenly moved! Out of nowhere, it slid four inches up my stomach! If I hadn't been so scared and freaked out, I probably would have peed myself laughing at the expression on the piercing guy's face. He shrieked like a little girl, too. Mostly I can control it now, but if I'm thinking too much about one part of my body sometimes it'll relocate to whatever part I'm thinking about. Like if I was thinking about getting a pedicure when I go home, I might look down and it'd be on my big toe or something. It's annoying as all hell, but I'm not, like, traumatized or anything. Mostly I just came to keep Danny and Brian company," Sandra jerked her thumb at the two boys she came in with. Smiling she slapped the boy with the long hair on the back. "Your turn, Bri Pie!"  
  
"Uh, well, my power is really dumb," he said quietly. Sandra laughed and slapped Brian on the back again.  
  
"Dude, everybody here has a dumb power! Out with it!"  
  
"I can move my hair. I can feel it, too. It's like a million little tentacles, but they're really weak. If you pull on it, it'll break like normal hair. It's not very sensitive, but it still hurts too bad if I try to cut it. That's why it's so long. I try to keep it in braids as much as I can, since I don't want it to get caught or broken or anything, but I have to take it down at night. It's like when you try to sit cross-legged for hours on end and your muscles cramp up. That's how my hair feels when I keep it braided too long." Brian took a deep breath and sank back against the couch. "See, I told you it was dumb."  
  
"No, Brian, it's not dumb. It's just different. And it's a part of who you are! This is just the kind of thinking I want to help you change. I'm so glad you came here tonight!" Audrey's smile was warm, and though Jenny could tell he thought Audrey was a dork, Brian couldn't help but smile back. Jenny pulled her attention away from Audrey and Brian when she felt a soft tug at her sleeve.   
  
"Hey, I'll go if you go first," Andy whispered to her. He still couldn't look her in the eye, but after their short conversation while wating for the meeting to start he finally felt comfortable focusing his eyes on her face. She smiled.  
  
"Sure, no problem," Jenny said softly. Audrey had heard this exchange and nodded encouragingly to Jenny.  
  
"Well, hi, my name's Jenny. I make things green. Basically, I rearrange the atoms in things so that instead of refracting whatever part of the light spectrum necessary to produce the original color, it refracts green instead. And, uh, it's not an especially pretty shade of green." She demonstrated by changing the color of her chocolate chip cookie. Originally, it had been an appetizing golden brown, flecked with dark chips. Now, however, it looked like a clump of dried green horse crap. Jenny noticed a few people stop nibbling their own cookies.  
  
"It doesn't change the taste, or the nutritional content, or anything like that. It's just green. I just woke up one day when I was 13 and my entire bed was this color. I can control it, although sometimes it'll activate in my sleep and if I'm thinking about redecorating my apartment sometimes I'll accidentally change the color of something I'm holding. That's about it." She looked down at the cookie in her hand, then wrapped it in her napkin. There was no way she'd finish it now. She loathed that color. Sighing, she looked over at Andy, who began fidgeting with a hole in the knee of his pants. As he spoke, he looked at his hands and that hole.  
  
"I'm Andy. I'm, uh, I'm a feral mutant. Sort of. You know, one of those mutants who are part animal? Well, that's me. Except, I didn't get any cool claws, or fangs, or wings, or anything. I squirt ink like a squid when I'm scared." Jenny was glad his eyes were so focused on his own hands. Several people were trying hard to suppress smiles. Sandra's eyes were as large as quarters and she was biting her lip so hard trying to hold back a giggle that Jenny was surprised she didn't draw blood. Not that she blamed them, it was a pretty bizarre mutation after all. But the poor boy was so shy and now Jenny was beginning to understand why.  
  
"I have to wear a diaper. All the time. It's completely involuntary. Has to do with my adrenaline levels and heart rate and all that. If I'm walking down the street and a car backfires and startles me, I squirt ink everywhere. I can't watch slasher or suspense movies. Exciting rides at theme parks are a bad idea. I hate April Fools day. Everyone thinks it so damn funny to pull scary practical jokes on Squid Boy. I have to change my diaper every time that happens. There's so much ink, it leaks everywhere even if I change it right away." Andy's face was flushed and he was picking furiously at the hole in his pants now. Suddenly, Jenny was incredibly thankful for her ugly shade of green.   
  
The introductions continued with the rest of the group. Sandra's laminated friend Danny was a silicon-based person (rather than carbon-based like everyone else). There was a woman who could turn brass into tin. She joked that in a former life she must have been a frustrated alchemist, doomed to repeat her failure until the end of time. One man could shoot small jets of water from his fingertips. Another man could command parakeets (only parakeets, and only one at a time) to do his bidding. The last member of their little group was a woman who could reshape things into dodecahedrons, 3-dimensional figures with 12 faces.  
  
Jenny listened politely to what they said, of course, but she couldn't keep her mind off of Andy. Ever since it manifested, Jenny had hated her mutation. Here she was, living in a society that hated her and would even kill her or lock her away in a concentration camp if it could, just because she was a mutant and she couldn't even use her mutation to defend herself! She couldn't even have any fun with it to get her mind off of the persecution! However, looking at Andy she was incredibly grateful that she got what she did. She could have gotten a power that not only was useless and boring, but was noticeable and singled her out for ridicule. Andy was probably the most painfully shy person she'd ever met and Jenny didn't have to read minds to know it must be due to the harassment he received because of his ink.   
  
Suddenly, Jenny was angry. Andy was so kind. After he got her cookies, she'd struck up a conversation with him. He'd asked her all sorts of questions about her job, given her winter gardening tips, and even offered to get his brother, a vet, to give her a discount if she brought her cats in for a check up. He didn't offer all that because he was desperate for a friend. On the contrary, Jenny got the distinct impression that he didn't expect anything at all after this conversation ended. He just did it because that was the kind of person he was. Yet no one could get past the fact that he squirts ink when he's frightened. Because of that, people tormented this poor man to the point where he could no longer look others in the eye. Jenny understood why people joined all those mutant terrorist groups she saw on TV.   
  
Jenny understood them, but she could never be one of them. She just didn't have it in her to face that kind of anger and hate in humanity directly. She couldn't bring herself to hate that much, either. So instead, Jenny made a vow to herself. She swore she would do her best to never make the same mistake that those in Andy's life had made. As a first step on her new path, after the meeting was over, she asked Andy if he'd like to go have dinner at the little cafe two blocks over before he went home for the night. He smiled shyly and nodded. For the first time when he looked at her, she got a good look at his eyes. They were the most beautiful shade of green Jenny had ever seen in her life.  
  
End.  
  
A/N - Well, that wasn't as funny as I set out to make it. I'm in sort of a melancholy mood tonight. But I told people I was going to write a story like this eventually and it was now or never. 


End file.
